Conflicting reports are emerging over the fate of the AirAsia aircraft lost in the Java Sea.
Confusion arose after Suyadi Bambang Supriyadi, one of the chief investigators, said that the Airbus A320 appeared to have exploded as it hit the sea – a theory that was disputed by aviation experts and at least one Indonesian official, the Times reported.
“It exploded because of the pressure,” Supriyadi, of the national search and rescue agency, said. “The cabin was pressurised and before the pressure of the cabin could be adjusted, it went down, boom.”
He said that the blast had been heard by fishermen in the area.
But Santoso Sayogo, an investigator at the national transportation safety committee in Indonesia, said: “There is no data to support that kind of theory.”
Passenger aircraft are programmed to reduce air pressure within the cabin as they descend. Even if that safety feature failed, the pressure at sea level is higher than at cruising altitude – meaning that it would implode, rather than explode, according to the newspaper.
The data recorder from the Airbus, which preserves readings from many of the aircraft’s instruments, has been flown to Jakarta for analysis by experts, among them representatives of the aircraft’s manufacturer.
The cockpit voice recorder, which is expected to have captured the last words of the pilot and co-pilot, was recovered last night.
It could take two weeks to analyse the data from the black boxes, according to Indonesia’s National Committee for Safety Transportation.
Flight QZ8501 crashed into the sea on December 28, 42 minutes into the two-hour flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore.
The aircraft disappeared from radar soon after a request from the pilot to ascend to avoid bad weather had been declined by air traffic control.
Only 48 bodies from the 162 passengers and crew on board have been recovered.